Clicking sound at the end of bounce

[Stutz]

Hi. Situation:- I am bouncing 7 vocal harmony tracks from tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7 to tracks 11 and 12. EQ is on and reverb for the 7 tracks and nothing on for 11 and 12. At the very end of the song while bouncing I am getting a very audible click.
I have checked all 7 tracks individually and there is no click on any of them. Anyone got any ideas or thoughts with this. Thanks for any advice.

 

[David Porter]

Not sure... perhaps a one time glitch or electrical interference or something?

But the first thing I might try is to redo the bounce.

 

[Stutz]

Hi David, thanks for the reply. I did try bouncing about 5 times earlier today with no luck, same result every time. I switched off a few hours ago but will try again later. I'll try bouncing to a stereo pair. I will post the result. Cheers

 

[Phil Tipping]

Could it be the physical click of the Stop button after bouncing being picked up by a live mic? This could easily happen it you assigned an input to the stereo bus and forgot to un-assign it, or you've left a Send path enabled.

 

[Stutz]

Hi Phil. When recording I always leave at least a 4 second gap of silence at the end before hitting the stop button, so I don't think that is the problem. What I did today successfully was bounce track 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. and 7 to stereo track 13/14 leaving track 1 out. I then bounced track 1 again to track 12 and again it had the annoying click. I managed to get rid of it using jog play. I will be very careful on my next session and use my footswitch and see how it goes. Thank you for the reply.

 

[-mjk-]

Nice recording engineering work @Stutz. That's how to get the job done.

 

[Stutz]

Thank you mjk. It should have been a simple acapella recording until I hit this glitch. I am now going to connect an outboard effect unit to see if I can tidy up the short comings at the very end because I have found out I can't seem to hit the effect button during a bounce or mixdown I.E. The last sung word having a repeat panning echo for a few seconds. If there is a workaround using onboard effects then I can't find it.

 

[Phil Tipping]

...I then bounced track 1 again to track 12 and again it had the annoying click

This is very bizarre if you are definitely sure track 1 is click-free. I have the same machine as you so as a last resort, if you don't mind sharing the contents of that particular song folder, you could use a file-transfer site and email me a link.
You should be able to adjust effects on-the-fly during a mixdown but not a bounce.
By the way, I assume you're using the latest firmware?

 

[Mark Richards]

...The last sung word having a repeat panning echo for a few seconds. If there is a workaround using onboard effects then I can't find it.

The work around is to create an FX track. The "how to" is in the Production Tips sticky (Index in Post #1). Caveat: available spare track required.

 

[Stutz]

Yes Phil, Firmware V 1.07 0023
I sometimes use "wetransfer.com" for file sharing. Can you PM me your email please and I will do that.

 

[Stutz]

Thank you Mark. Looking at it now

I ended up doing it with the on board effects. Thanks Mark

 

[Stutz]

Phil, I have sent the files to you via wetransfer.com

 

[Phil Tipping]

Files received ok John, thanks. Just had a very quick glance at the settings and you have lots of inputs and tracks with PRE sends enabled. Won't be able to confirm if this is the cause tonight as it's getting too late, but will check tomorrow. Meanwhile if you can turn these PREs off and retry bouncing 1 to 12, it might do the trick.

 

[Phil Tipping]

Have now had a good listen to this and it's definitely not the PRE settings causing the problem.
I turned both master sends off, and the click was still there. Then retried with all the PREs set to OFF and individual levels off just to be sure, and no difference. The assigns all seemed ok.
The click sounds like an electronic one, as opposed to stray pickup from the mic, and it appears at the point where all the vocal tracks stop.
The interesting thing is if I rewind a few seconds and play just the end of the song, the click is not there, but if I rewind to the beginning, the click appears.
Both tracks 1 and 2 played in isolation produce the click. I didn't try any others as it means playing the track through from start to finish each time!
My hunch is this is being caused by corrupted file(s) on the card.
I tried a 'delete unused' on the song, which reduced the song size slightly, and it then got in a complete knot playing back, with file errors and read timeout messages. Had to power off to get back control.
Note that my machine isn't quite the same as yours - I misread your avatar gear details and thought you had a 32sd, but it's a 24sd, so I think you should get a second opinion with another 24sd owner.

Just as an aside, one thing I never noticed before on these machines was tiny blobs at various points on the coloured track lines in the timeline view (they're very subtle - same colour but brighter). I wonder if this indicates edit/punch-in points?

Finally, the harmonies on this song are superb!

 

[Stutz]

Thank you Phil for your time and effort for looking into this. I will back up the whole SD card and reformat the card. Regarding the edit/punch in points, there were quite a few of them start stop scenarios where the vocalist went wrong and it was a stop rewind drop back in situation, as is to be expected. The "Delete Unused" is a practise I use regularly . Once again thank you for your time and expertise.

 

[-mjk-]

@Phil Tipping time to try the export/import fix?

 

[Phil Tipping]

Re: "time to try the export/import fix?" yes you're right MJ, this was the advice given.
The card was a recommended one but had apparently become very full prior to this. Also some corrective action had been taken to fix previous freezes due to corrupt files, so I guess the card contents have deteriorated over time.
I think it's best to always try and fix the card at the first sign of a problem, i.e. backup using copy and export, followed by a re-format.

 

[-mjk-]

Phil, I'd be interested to know whether or not you can fix the click by exporting the track (also, if the exported track has the click when played outside the DP environment) and importing it back. I mean, would you give it a try and report back please?

 

[Phil Tipping]

Progress so far. Exporting and importing to a new song does not fix the problem, so the 'corruption' is still embedded inside the exported wave file.
But the file plays perfectly ok on external wave players. It's only the DP machine which handles it differently - i.e. it plays a click if the file is played from the start, but doesn't play a click when the file is played from any other point.
I've sent the details to Tascam. They may just say that if a file is corrupt, the action is undefined, but I'm pushing for an update so it handles these files more 'gracefully' and is consistent with other players.
Will report back if I receive anything.
(thanks to MJ & Mark for confirming the problem on their machines, and to Stutz for sharing the audio in the first place)

 

[Stutz]

Thank you for the update Phil.